A black conservative's place for independent thinking and common sense -- A little oasis for those who got caught up in the momentum of the civil rights movement, but failed to discern the false from the true

Thursday, January 07, 2010

A report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) discusses a Zogby poll that shows the wide gap between the leaders of religious denominations and the actual membership of said denominations. Did you know that it is the consensus among religious leaders that the way to solve the problem of illegal immigration is to make more visas available to the illegals, hence, automatically turning them into legal immigrants? The numbers of immigrants, legal and illegal, now flooding the country, and their impact on American employment, is of no consequence to most of the religious leadership. However, such matters do concern the members of their congregations.

The survey was conducted among Catholics, mainline Protestants, "born again" Protestants, and Jews. Read the report to learn how the percentages break down between religious leaders and church members on issues such as desire for more immigrants, displacement of American workers by immigrants, pathway to citizenship, and the role of law enforcement.

CIS reports: "Most parishioners and congregants prefer more enforcement to cause illegal workers to go home, rather than legalization of illegal immigrants, which most religious leaders prefer. ... Most parishioners believe that enforcing the law and improving the wages and working conditions of unskilled workers to attract more Americans is the best way to deal with illegal immigration."

4 comments:

Bartholomew
said...

Thanks for posting this. It's strange that the leaders of Christians and the Christians themselves hold such divergent views (and the same goes, to a lesser extent, for Jews and their leaders). And I bet we'd find a similar disparity on any relatively recent addition to the leftist agenda.

I wonder if this is because the leaders and the laymen aren't really following the same faith. Going beyond immigration for instance, most liberal leaders of all religions seem to resemble one another more closely than any of them resembles their respective flocks. Sometimes, it almost looks like Liberalism is their real religion, and "Christianity," "Judaism," "Hinduism", etc. are just the names of their denominations, no more different from one another than Methodism from Presbyterianism.

Bartholomew wrote:Sometimes, it almost looks like Liberalism is their real religion, and "Christianity," "Judaism," "Hinduism", etc. are just the names of their denominations, no more different from one another than Methodism from Presbyterianism.

Yes, I don't think there's any doubt that liberalism is a form of religion. When you are determined to believe in that which cannot be substantiated, I think you've entered the realm of religious belief.

I think it's two things at issue:#1. Christian leaders want to reach more people for Christ, they see the influx of illegals as a new group to reach. I dont know about this angle, because alot of the illegals are catholic or protestant already.

#2. They feel like they're doing the illegals a favor in supporting their cause. I can understand this but a better way to do this is to question the American Welfare State (AWS) in its entirety. The machinations of AWS has put the American worker at a severe disadvantage in the marketplace while simultaneously depressing the economies of these Latin nations, causing this problem.

Criticizing the AWS in its entirety will bring untold wrath, mostly from other Statist Christians and Christian leaders. It would be similar to the Jeremiah Wright outrage, when he rightly criticized the Warfare State.

Luke Fisher wrote:"I dont know about this angle, because alot of the illegals are catholic or protestant already."

All the more reason for a clergyman to want these newcomers to find a berth in his church. Do you know the statistics of the dying Catholic churches? And quite a few Protestant ones have folded, too. It's not about conversion. It's about corralling more of their own kind.

They feel like they're doing the illegals a favor in supporting their cause.

Yes, I believe that a lot of this clergy, and others too, are interpreting their universal, "catholic" view of Christianity. There is no separation, no divisions -- God made all as one, etc. Hence, there are no borders.

Loss of the Issues & Views website

Due to the fact that the owners of the company that has hosted Issues & Views - The Website, since its creation in 1997, have decided to host only sites in Alaska, the website linked to this blog is probably lost.

Issues & Views - The Website (www.issues-views.com) contained hundreds of articles first printed in the hard copy Issues & Views newsletter (1983 through 2002), along with newer articles composed in the 1990s.

Although the former host has re-directed clicks to the website to this blog, it does not appear that there will be any rescue of the website's files or database. For this reason, surfers looking for issues-views.com are landing on this blog. (The website is currently being cached by Google.)

I have learned that an archived version of the website is available on Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, this last capture was performed in 2008, so it lacks certain minor deletions and editing done in 2009 and 2010. However, anyone searching for a particular article should be able to find it there.

- Elizabeth (issues@issues.cnc.net)

Racism is not "sin"

Over the years, as whites have worked to defend themselves against the charge of "racism," they have validated this slur by giving it greater importance than it deserves, and thereby helped to institutionalize it as the world's greatest "sin." As to genuine sin, harboring negative thoughts concerning some group is much further down the list of human deficiencies than bombing Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Hamburg, or hacking to death with machetes the men, women and children of an enemy tribe. Now, those are sins! Seeking to force "diversity" down the throats of an unreceptive segment of society is the religious mission of rabid, agenda-driven ideologues. None of this apparent concern for "social justice" has ever been about virtue. It's about power.

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Jacobs and Potter on the un-American nature of "hate crime" legislation.